


Three Scenes in Other People's Lives

by imaginary_golux



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Just Add Kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 17:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15953972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: A young Chenelo gets a birthday gift from her favorite sister; Kiru hears many things about the new Emperor, but listens most closely to what is not said; and Csevet finishes a long day of work and contemplates how much his life has changed.Beta by my darling Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw, and by the wonderful farevenasdecidedtouse.





	Three Scenes in Other People's Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



I: Chenelo

Chenelo is dubious about the cat. It’s a very...kind gift, she supposes, kind for her older sister to think of her, but she has no experience with small animals, and the kitten is so _very_ small. It fits into the lap of her skirt with a great deal of space to spare, a ball of fluff with tiny prickles of claws, and it’s making little...squeaking sounds.

“Pet it,” Shaleän suggests. Chenelo strokes the little creature’s head tentatively with one finger, and it stops squeaking and starts _rumbling_ instead, an enormous sound from such a small animal. Chenelo cradles it a little closer.

“What wilt thou name it?” Shaleän asks after a moment.

“Cloud,” Chenelo says after a little thought, because the kitten is as soft as a cloud looks to be, and the same gentle grey as the rainclouds which get caught on the tops of the mountains.

Cloud squeaks, rising to its tiny feet and turning around in a circle, then tripping over a fold in Chenelo’s skirt and falling over, mewing indignantly. Chenelo chuckles and rights the little thing tenderly. “Thou art _fine_ ,” she tells her kitten. “I shall look after thee.”

“Thou likest it, then?” Shaleän asks hopefully.

“I do,” Chenelo says, as Cloud licks her fingertips and rumbles that astoundingly large purr. “I thank thee, sister.”

Shaleän leans forward and brushes a kiss over Chenelo’s forehead. “Thou art _ever_ welcome, little sister.” She contemplates the cat in Chenelo’s lap for a moment, then adds, “I shall go and find thee some milk, then, and some fish. I do not think Cloud is quite ready to hunt mice for his supper yet.”

“No,” Chenelo agrees, as Cloud rolls over onto its - his, apparently - back and begins gently gnawing on the tip of her finger, looking as fierce as a tiny ball of fluff can look. “But thou wilt be a mighty hunter indeed when thou art grown, wilt thou not?” she asks the cat, and Cloud mews what certainly sounds like agreement in response.

Chenelo was dubious, but now she thinks a kitten might just be the perfect birthday gift.

II: Kiru

Kiru has grown used to listening to what is _not_ said. It is a valuable skill for a cleric: often, a disease or an injury may be best diagnosed by listening to the pauses, the hesitations, the words half-voiced and nearly swallowed in shame or pain or fear. It is a useful skill in the palace, too: listening for the silences when she enters a room, the words which cease suddenly when she is present, the assertions which never quite become sound and yet ring loudly when she has passed. To be a female athmaza is a rare thing, and were she not a cleric, those unvoiced words _would_ be spoken, and to her detriment. The protection it affords her is not _why_ she became a cleric - her vocation has been a part of her since she was very young - but it is, she must admit if only to herself, occasionally useful.

Kiru listens to what is not said, and she hears a great many things about the new Emperor, their so-young, unknown Serenity. She has spent long enough listening to the court to be able to translate the poisonous words into something a little closer to the truth.

She hears that he is weak, and thinks: _kind_. She hears that he is too much a goblin, and thinks: _Not then like Varenichebel_. She hears that he is fumbling, clumsy, half-witted, and thinks: _untrained, untaught, but learning_.

She decides, carefully and over many hours of thought, mind whirling as her hands move in practiced skill, that an Emperor so willing to break away from the traditions of his father’s dynasty is one she is proud to honor and to serve. She does not say so - Kiru has been good at keeping secrets since she was old enough to speak - but she listens to the words unspoken around her, and thinks that many of her fellow clerics and mazei are beginning to think the same.

And then comes the morning she is roused by the Adremaza, his hair unkempt and his expression nothing like its usual courtly veneer of calm. “Kiru Athmaza,” the Adremaza says, “we know you have a vocation which is dear to you, but we cannot think of _anyone_ we trust more.”

Kiru says carefully, “You honor us, Adremaza.”

“We burden you,” he says. “The Emperor’s Second Nohecharis has betrayed him, and though His Serenity lives, by the grace of every god, he _must_ have another maza beside him ere the day is out.”

Kiru hears what the Adremaza does not say: _this_ Emperor, unlike any other she has ever heard of, might be willing to bend custom to the breaking point, and take a woman for his nohecharo. Any other Emperor, she knows, would demand a male maza, no matter how much more skilled she is than any of her colleagues; but this one -

“Let us go to His Serenity at once,” Kiru says, squaring her shoulders. “We will be his Second Nohecharo, if he likes of us.”

“We think,” says the Adremaza gravely, “that he will.”

III: Csevet

It is very late, and Csevet is very tired, but he’s contented nonetheless; His Serenity has managed to thread a very careful needle with the Corazhas between who _wants_ the iron contracts for the Wisdom Bridge and who will actually provide the quality and quantity needed at a bearable price, and Csevet, of course, coordinated the assembly of all the information His Serenity needed to make his arguments. He can’t help feeling proud every time _his_ information, _his_ advice gives His Serenity that tiny edge he needs to make his visions a reality.

And what visions! Csevet is still boggled by His Serenity’s most recent inspiration, which is to have a small hospital _in_ the palace, available at no charge to the servants and couriers and penniless nobles who otherwise suffer in silence. It will be the Osmerrem Aro Danivaran Memorial Hospital, if His Serenity has anything to say about it. Csevet has spent rather more time with Kiru than is his usual wont, learning what is needed by clerics and their layperson aides, what sort of space is best for a hospital and how it should be laid out and what supplies will be required, in order that His Serenity might have an accurate accounting to present to the Corazhas. He is, in fact, writing up the last of his notes from their most recent conversation even now, his pen moving smoothly even as his mind drifts slightly.

“Goodnight, Mer Aisava,” the last of the day-shift undersecretaries murmurs as she leaves, and Csevet raises his head long enough to reply, “Goodnight, Min Tativin.” She’s one of the new undersecretaries, the one Csevet brought in after he became His Serenity’s right hand - a courier’s sister, this one, clever and quiet, with very good handwriting and an infallible sense of discretion. Csevet is slowly - _very_ slowly - easing the old emperor’s secretaries, the ones who got their jobs by knowing someone rather than by being any use, out of His Serenity’s service. This is complicated by the fact that Csevet has to find someplace _else_ to put them, but...in this, as in so many things, His Serenity relies, even if he doesn’t know it, on Csevet’s discretion and diplomacy. Csevet is proud that not one of the people he has quietly moved into a job more suited to their talents - or lack thereof - has even begun to _whisper_ about being mistreated.

In this, as in all things, Csevet will guard his emperor’s reputation as dearly as the nohecharei guard His Serenity’s life.

He files the last piece of paper carefully away - the last for now; the night shift will be here any minute, and there will be a new pile of papers on his desk in the morning - and stands slowly, grimacing when his back creaks. To think that sitting so much would be as uncomfortable as constant riding about! His old comrades in the courier ranks would laugh at him to see him hobbling about like an old man after nothing more strenuous than a day following His Serenity around and organizing papers.

On which note...the clock chimes, and Csevet leaves the wide room which has become his personal domain at a slightly-more-than-casual pace. Vanet will be back from his latest courier trip, and Csevet has bespoken a late dinner for the two of them. It is too long since he last saw his friend. Vanet will have all the best gossip, and Csevet has some in exchange - nothing about His Serenity, of course, nor His Serenity’s wife, nor their household, but purely by virtue of his position Csevet hears scraps and rumors of all sorts of unlikely news, and there are plenty of them he can share without a qualm.

It will be good to spend an evening laughing with Vanet over a bottle of the very good wine which the emperor’s secretary can afford.

And it will be good, in the morning, to return to His Serenity’s side, and give him the tools he needs to change the very world.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the very first fic exchange I have ever done and I hope my recipient likes it! Thanks for a really intriguing prompt!


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